Quote:We agree with each other that mother earth is beautiful.And she knows how to preserve her beauty. She does not need cosmetics. And yet she knows how to transform. She has the power of transformation and healing. And we have to learn from her. To me, mother earth is a real bodhisattva, a very beautiful bodhisattva. Having a lot of virtues like non-discrimination, mother earth does not discriminate. Mother earth does not say, "You are beautiful, you are not beautiful. I am beautiful, I am not beautiful." Mother earth never says, "I am beautiful". She is beautiful, but she never says, "I am beautiful". If we practice well enough, we will see that we ourselves are children of mother earth. You cannot deny it. Buddha, bodhisattva, saints and even terrorists are children of the earth. And as the children of the mother earth, we carry mother earth inside of us. Mother earth is not only outside of us and she is also inside of us. If you look into yourself, you see mother earth. You carry mother earth. And if mother earth is beautiful, we are beautiful. There should be no complex. If mother earth is beautiful, we are beautiful also. The problem is whether we know how to preserve our beauty. If mother earth is without discrimination, we have to learn non-discrimination as a virtue. This person is beautiful, that person is not beautiful. I am beautiful enough, I am not beautiful enough. That is discrimination. And since we have a lot of discrimination, we have a lot of fear. We are afraid that we are not beautiful enough. We have no confidence. So, the problem is that whether we know how to preserve our beauty and preserve our virtues that our beautiful mother has. I think that the teaching of the Buddha on love is very crucial, very helpful. Mother earth is very loving, very compassionate. Lovingkindness and compassionate. And she loves without discrimination. She does not prefer one species over another. Can we do that? Mother earth has a lot of compassion. She is able to help us heal if we know how to go back to her and surrender to her. And we can get the healing from mother earth.Our practice of touching the earth, as our practice as walking meditation, is to help us to go back to the earth and get the healing that we need. Even the Buddha practices touching the earth. There is a mudra called "earth touching". The Buddha is touching the earth with his hand.He is in connection with mother earth. We, humans, lose that kind of contact with mother earth. We are alienated from nature, mother earth. That is why we become sick.Because of that lack of non-discrimination, equanimity, we begin to suffer. We think that we are more beautiful than someone else, we believe that we are less beautiful than someone else, or we believe that we are equally beautiful. So, these kinds of complexes make us suffer a lot.If we try to buy cosmetics, if we do plastic surgery because we don't have confidence, we don't know that we are beautiful like that. You think in order to be beautiful, you should be like that, like this, like that. You have a notion of beauty.But for mother earth, non-discrimination is the way she looks. If we learn that way of looking, we can see that everything is beautiful.Everything is a wonder.Not only the lotus is beautiful but the mud is also beautiful. That is the mind of non-discrimination.Look at the babies. They are very beautiful. They are all flowers. Their face is truly a flower. Their tiny hand is a flower. Their tiny foot is a flower. And the child is beautiful when she sleeps, the child is beautiful when she plays. But we, adults, have lost our beauty and freshness because we don't know how to preserve that beauty. We cry too much. And our eyes are not limpidand beautiful anymore. We have many wrinkles because we worry too much.